"Do I matter? Did the hands that formed my existence do it intentionally? Was it purposed? Carefully crafted? If so, what was the point? Why are we so different, unique in our ways of loving and giving and living?"
Such questions stir our soul's deepest parts, with a faint flicker of hope that more waits to be discovered. This undercurrent longs to surface and capsize our lives in order to reorder them. It bubbles and gurgles and finally washes over us like an early morning wave against the rocks. and we let it. We surrender to it, because something in it wakes us up.

                                                                           From "Freefall to Fly" by REBEKAH LYONS

We've been away far from here, a place lost in the hills where water tumbling over rocks is the loudest sound and the only light at night spills down from the stars. In a place like that I feel small and questions about who I am and why I'm here overwhelm me. What if there are more days behind me than up ahead? What will be the sum of it all? Will it add up to anything worthwhile?

Walking home one day across the fields, just the two of us, with the leaves flying around he took my hand and told me how lucky we were. It stilled the wildness in me. The word "free" shares roots with the word "friend", someone beloved or held dear. I never feel more free than I do when I feel loved. The fear leaves me then and I feel I could do anything.

There was a picture in the room we were staying in. I didn't notice it until the last day. It was of a bird flying high above a cornfield in the bluest sky.

Day 29: Taking the Leap

"She took the leap and built her wings on the way down."
                                                                    KOBI YAMADA

I remembered what it was that made me come alive, the things I loved to do as a child. I knew more about who I was then than I do now.  I loved to make things - paper, string, beads, buttons, needles and yarn - I wove them into some kind of usefulness. I loved words - I wove them too in the quiet places where I felt most at home. I also knew that I had a heart that was bent towards melancholy rather than merriment, that in a crowd it was the sad faces I was drawn to, the ones not laughing with their eyes. I ached for those who had to make impossible choices, who felt stuck between a rock and a hard place and whichever way they turned the losses were going to outweigh the gains.
Then I chose a career where I was the centre and tiny planets spun around me in a blur of light and noise. It wasn't wrong but it wasn't right either. I stepped away from it earlier this year. It all slowed down and I saw where I wanted most to be. Here at home with time for the ones I love and the weaving I used to do. And there, in a quiet room overlooking a garden where women come in with all the broken pieces of their hearts falling from their hands and I sit with them while they slowly piece them back together again.

Day 28: Measuring the Gulf

"My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels-
Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour, found;
Measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound!"

                                                                                         EMILY BRONTË

Driving home from the clinic, she asks me if there's something wrong with her.  We've spent the morning with a paediatric occupational health therapist assessing her difficulties with co-ordination.  Simple tasks like writing, cutting with scissors and using a knife and fork are a huge challenge for her.  She's only seven years old but already she's being made to feel she doesn't measure up, that what is expected of her and what she can do are too far apart. I don't want her to feel that she isn't enough just the way she is. She has taught me more about being free than anyone.  She hasn't wasted one moment of her life being somebody she was never made to be. She has dared always from the moment she fell into this world, believing everything was possible even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. She dared her first breath when none was to be had.

"No," I tell her, "There is nothing wrong with you. You are wonderful. You just have to work hard to be able to do some of the things the rest of us find easy and we have to work hard to do the things that you find easy."
"Like what?" she asks.
"Like flying!" I think out loud and she laughs.

Day 27: Days Like Leaves

These days are like leaves. The wind blows through them and they're gone. There's a storm coming in from the sea. We tie down what we want to keep.  I feel that's how it is with me - I've gathered what matters to me now and I'm wanting to let go of what doesn't anymore. It's a freeing kind of thing.  I remember long ago growing up in South East Asia, monsoon nights when the house would shake with great cracks of thunder and we'd lie awake watching the trees all lit up with white lightening and being torn by the wind. I didn't feel fear - I felt more alive than I have ever known, awe and wonder crackling through my veins. The next day, the air would be lighter and running barefoot across the rain-drenched grass I'd believe the world was made new. There was a storm the day before she died. I watched the wind strip what was left of her away and how it bowed us all to the ground. I know now how I can bend and not break, how deep the roots have to go to keep me upright. There can be unleaving but I won't be felled.

Day 24: The Long Shadow

 I thought I would write here everyday this October but as the nights drew in and the leaves began to fall I fell silent.  There's a long shadow that hangs over this month for me.  I thought after many years I'd outrun it.  I've written about it elsewhere, dragged every detail out into the light hoping it would chase the darkness away.  I wanted to be done with it, to feel there was nothing left to say and that I could move forward without looking back.  I thought that meant I would be free.

I've confused being free with finding peace.  Some things rest in the past, others we carry with us all our lives.  For me, I can't leave this thing behind because the joy and the pain are so intricately entwined.  I lost but I gained. I grieve deeply because I loved deeply and I can't separate those two things.  There will always be a shadow because there was light.

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy."

                                                                                      KAHLIL GIBRAN

Day 15:The Other Side of Fear

The other side of every fear is freedom.
There are those who fly too close to the sun and those who never leave the ground.
I have always envied the brave of heart- the ones who think only of what can be gained rather than what might be lost.  These days I find myself wanting to throw caution to the wind and let it carry away what it will.  Last night I dreamt I was standing on a high cliff above the sea.  Someone close by me fell and I jumped instinctively after them as though I could some how catch them on the way down.  I woke with a jolt before I found out whether or not I could really fly.

Day 11: The Peace of Wild Things

"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

WENDELL BERRY